Let us be honest here. There are just some fights where there is only room for the one tank. Vezax and Saphiron come mostly to mind. Heck, in a 25-man raid, if a fight requires only two tanks that means most of the time someone has to DPS.

Lately, that has been me a lot. My Fury DPS was a joke when I had the opportunity to try it, and so I’ve been doing double protection and doing my best to DPS with my shield on. Just Breaking 2k DPS with full raid buffs was, shall we say, about all I could handle.

Then, along came the Trial of the Champion with it’s massive amounts of Armor Penetration and its sweet two-hander. It was just begging for an Arms build and for me to try my hand at secondary spec DPS again.

In case you haven’t been following it, my long lost Bro-on-another-server Linedan has been put together an awesome and comprehensive Protection Warrior leveling guide for those of you thinking of rolling with the best. For ease of navigation, let me point you in the right direction (apologies for the pingback spam in advance Lewis):

This series has inspired me to put in a few words on what I consider to be some of the points of leveling a Warrior Tank. Some of these points echo what the Panzercow has said because I think they’re extra important. Others are little extra tips from my own experience.

But first let me say that I am a big advocate for Protection Warriors. I have two of them. Even before the massive buff in 3.0, I thought they were the cat’s pajamas. I may have leveled Tarsus as Fury, but I just couldn’t contain myself and I ended up speccing Prot on him anyway. This may have been because I was tanking on him anyway, but considering I do this on my Blood Specced Deathknight I think this is more of an addiction that I just make easier when I’m the “tank spec.”

I have been revising this post again and again since I first composed it as details have emerged about 3.1. Time is running short, however, so I’ve taken the liberty to try to strip it down to the most basic elements in anticipation of the upcomming patch.

Needless to say one of the things that I am most looking forward to in the near future is the ability to swap seamlessly between two selections of talents, aka Dual-Spec. I’m glad that Blizzard is taking this on, but from my little soapbox this seems like it will have some pretty broad implications for Warrior Tanking, I think even things that may have escaped notice in the omni-present opinion pages of the blogosphere. Continue reading →

In case you missed it, part 2 of Eyonix’s class updates reveal had some interesting bits for warriors. Most of these seem like they’re designed to address warrior DPS and raid utility, but most of them qualify as fairly sweeping changes to existing class mechanics, particularly for tanks. To cut to the chase, the warrior specific section says:

Changing stances now has a much reduced cost: you lose a maximum of 20 rage (10 with Tactical Mastery). For example, if you have 100 rage and change stances, you will have 80 rage remaining. If you have 10 rage and change stances, all of your rage is lost. In addition, we may change the penalties associated with some stances.

You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed, such as through a Power Word: Shield.

Blood Frenzy now causes 2/4% physical damage done.

Sunder Armor (and similar debuffs) now reduces armor by 4% per application, and is now a single rank. Creature armor has been globally reduced so that debuffed targets should take about the same damage from physical attacks that they did before this change. The net effect should be that this debuff is slightly less mandatory in PvE and is not disproportionately more powerful against cloth targets in PvP.

We are also adding increased damage to Arms, possibly through Overpower or Slam.

We are also looking at granting rage when the warrior blocks, dodges or parries.